The quickening maze
By: Adam Foulds.
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 2009
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 258
ISBN-13: 9780224087469
Subjects: Clare, John, -- 1793-1864 -- Mental health -- Fiction; Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, -- Baron, -- 1809-1892 -- Fiction; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Mental health -- Fiction; Psychiatric hospitals -- England -- London -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Mentally ill -- Commitment and detention -- England -- London -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; London (England) -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction
Description: Centres on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare. After years struggling with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, Clare finds himself in High Beach Private Asylum - an institution run on reformist principles which would later become known as occupational therapy. At the same time another poet, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life and catastrophic schemes of the asylum's owner, the peculiar, charismatic Dr Matthew Allen. For John Clare, a man who had grown up steeped in the freedoms and exhilarations of nature, who thought 'the edge of the world was a day's walk away', a locked door is a kind of death.